He's a Brute (Tough Love Book 1)

by Chloe Liese

  His message said, Massachusetts General. Admitted last night.

  I typed furiously. Details. I need more than that.

  His reply, Can’t get department information but confirmed she’s still there.

  “Shit.”

  Lucas watched me cautiously. “What’s the matter?”

  I threw my bag on my shoulder and headed toward the snow squall waiting outside. If they grounded our flight because of a few fucking snow flurries, I wouldn’t be responsible for my actions.

  “I have no clue, Lucas. But you bet your ass I’m going to find out.”

  “Hi Marcia, this is Zed.”

  Marcia was one of Dad’s nurses at the hospital. “How are you, honey?”

  “Thank you, I’m fine. I’m sorry to be short, but can you get my dad on the phone?”

  “One moment, dear.”

  I paced outside Logan as I held the line. Lucas followed me not far behind. It was unethical to leverage my dad’s connection in the hospital, but I had zero remorse about it. I needed information.

  Marcia’s voice clicked back on the line. “Zed, I’m sorry but he’s in the middle of numerous patient rounds. Is it a true emergency?”

  I almost did the selfish thing and said yes, but I was a well-trained surgeon’s son, so I didn’t. After I thanked Marcia, my phone took my anger as I slammed it shut and pocketed it. The parking lot was packed, and my car wasn’t responding to my fob.

  Lucas caught up to me and gripped my shoulder.

  “Come on, this way. You’re in no state to drive.”

  “I’m fine,” I grumbled.

  I was fine to drive, but I was tight on time. The car wasn’t giving itself up in the sea of vehicles, and walking the rows would take forever. While I deliberated, Lucas hooked his arm around my neck and dragged me to his Aston that was twenty feet away. After he slammed the door shut, and threw our bags in the back, he leveled me with a severe stare from the driver’s seat.

  “You need to learn that sometimes, Zeddy, like you, I can be an obstinate arse. I’m driving you. End of. I’ll get you there just as fast as your little Italian putt-putt would.”

  I was too worried about Nairne to even get pissed at him for knocking the Ferrari, and Lucas wisely took that as a signal to drive us in silence. The harbor was half-frozen, a sludgy palette of dark water and grey ice. Traffic was for once not its typical, terrible self, and we were there in not even ten minutes.

  Lucas stepped out and chucked his keys at someone, telling them to take care of it as he stuffed a wad of cash in their hand.

  I sprang out of the car and into high gear to get inside.

  Dad’s floor. That made the most sense. I’d sweet talk the nurses, say I’d lost my cousin’s room number. I’d smile and they’d give it up. Easy.

  Lucas caught up, covered his grin of amusement while I spun my web of lies with the neurology front desk, and got what I needed. She was actually on this floor.

  I left Lucas in the waiting area and jogged on, my thoughts spinning tires of worry. A cluster of doctors were down the hallway, heading in the same direction, and I picked up the pace. If they were coming for her, I wanted in that room before they got there. I kept my head down, because plenty of those guys would know me, and I didn’t want to get hung up with small talk.

  I got to her door and collided in the threshold with another man.

  “Dad?”

  He frowned at me. “Zeddo, what the hell are you doing? I’m seeing a patient. You can’t be chasing me down while I’m on rotations.”

  “Dad, I—”

  “We have reputations to maintain, mimmo. I know you’ve been low lately, and you’re struggling, but this crosses professional lines, and—”

  “Dad!” I snapped. “I’m here for her.”

  Dad frowned at me and adjusted his glasses. “La fragola?”

  I scowled. I hadn’t told him anything about her. “How the fuck would you know?”

  He shrugged and stepped back to let me through the doorway. “Teo can’t keep a secret to save his life.”

  “Figures.” My hands raked through my hair. “That’s my...” I glanced around. “My…la mia ragazza. You’re treating her?”

  Dad was neurology. Spines and brains. Scary shit. I wanted none of that to be wrong with Nairne.

  Dad was smiling widely. He was such an Italian mama, pushing me about marriage and grandbabies. He hadn’t seen me with a girlfriend since high school and I think he’d started to despair. “A woman, eh? About time.” He patted me on the shoulder. “She’s fine. Took a good knock to the head, but her spine looks as excellent as…well it’s all relative. It looks good, given her history.”

  I sighed. On the one hand, she was all right. Whatever she was dealing with, Dad was confident she’d make it through. That was an enormous relief. On the other hand, the thought of her damaged spine and Dad’s cavalier tone about it turned my stomach. “Comforting, Dad. Real comforting.”

  “You all right, mimmo? Did I nauseate you? You look green. Always an easy puker. Go in there. Sit down.” He chuckled, knocking on the door.

  A woman answered but it wasn’t Nairne.

  “Sorry to be such a disappointment,” I grumbled. “No second-generation surgical wonders following in your footsteps.”

  Dad logged onto a computer outside the curtain and typed some shit at a million miles an hour. “It’s all right, Zeddo. I like you just the way you are. And there is promise after all, because then came Teo, who handles cadavers like it’s Christmas morning.”

  I stared at him. “When has Teo had access to cadavers?” My brother wasn’t in medical school, but he was at Harvard for pre-med, and I knew Dad was crossing his fingers he would head there. Teo had that unique combination of intellectual and emotional intelligence, a keen sense of the relationship between body and mind. He’d be a great doctor.

  Dad waved his hand in the air. “Don’t you worry about that.”

  Sometimes my dad had me concerned there were still more twilight dealings in his life than he led me to believe. “I don’t wanna know,” I mumbled.

  He smiled before a nurse came in and stole his attention. I snapped the curtain back and felt the bands of anxiety around my chest loosen. Nairne didn’t look too bad. A little pale.

  “Hey.” I kept my voice soft, stuck my hands in my pockets. All I wanted was to touch her, but she was asleep, or at least really out of it. I didn’t want to disturb her.

  “Allô, Zed,” Shirley Temple chirped.

  “Elodie, right?”

  She stood and pulled me into a hug, which I returned sparingly. I didn’t really hug much, and Shirley Temple was a squeezer.

  “She’s in and out of it. Her fall caused some severe neuropathic pain. So, they raised her narcotics.”

  Nairne fidgeted in her sleep and I had to touch her. Smooth back her hair that looked as strawberry as it got under the cool fluorescents. Deep red. Those tiny little fruits that are tart as hell, but you can’t help but pop them in your mouth. The first signs of spring and life returning.

  I glanced up at Elodie. “Don’t you live in Paris?”

  She frowned at me and crossed her arms. “Yes.”

  Nairne stirred and I traced the line of her cheekbones, then over the bridge of her nose. Down to her mouth. I wanted to kiss it. I wanted it talking back to me and giving me hell. “You flew here, at a moment’s notice. That’s…very loyal.”

  “She’s the sister I never had. I’d do anything for her. I also have more money than god, so might as well use it for very expensive last-minute flights when my dearest friend needs me.

  Nairne slowly opened her eyes.

  Elodie moved to her side, squeezed Nairne’s hand, then released it. “I’ll give you two time alone.”

  Nairne blinked at me for a minute before she frowned. Then her eyes drifted over my shoulder and she smiled. “Hello again, Dr. Silver Fox.”

  I glared at Dad over my shoulder as he raised his hands in surrender.
“She’s on a pretty stiff cocktail, Zeddo. I can’t help it.”

  I sighed. “Fucking fantastic.”

  “Eh, you sort of look like me. Take it as a compliment.” Dad stepped up to her and shone a small light in her eyes. He had her full attention.

  “Nairne, how are you feeling? Any more nausea? Headaches?”

  She swung her head side to side, nice and slow. “I feel…great.” The woman was high as a fucking kite.

  The nurse stepped up. “She hasn’t said anything about her head hurting. Hasn’t thrown up. Drank some juice, ate crackers.”

  “Good, good.” Dad held his finger in front of her eyes, did some kind of bilateral tracking. She seemed to pass with flying colors because he straightened and smiled. “I’m satisfied. Nairne you’ll need to be woken every few hours for one more night, just as a precaution. But after that, a follow-up in a few months, and let us know if there are any sudden changes in vision, or recurring headaches.”

  Nairne smiled at my dad, then turned to stare seriously at me again. “He’s not bad looking either.”

  Twenty-Eight

  Zed

  Nairne dealt with chronic pain. Since her spine had cracked, and sheared halfway across her spinal column, her nerves were all fucked and sent the wrong messages. But her recent fall had seen her old pain threshold and raised it double.

  When I went to weddings—with over thirty cousins, I was always going to weddings— I sat there judging the hell out of that one line, in sickness and in health. How could you ever abandon someone you’d promised your life to, just because they became sick or injured? You really had to promise not to hit the road when shit hit the fan? What kind of fuckface would do that?

  I’d watched my father nurse my mother for the better part of a decade. Watched him hold her hair while she puked, rub her down when her bones ached from chemo. I’d heard them talk in hushed tones as she bathed, while he kept her company and made sure the water stayed hot. He’d brushed her hair before it fell out. He wasn’t a hero. She wasn’t a deadweight. They were partners, facing what life had dealt them. That’s what you fucking did.

  But up until now, I’d missed something from the inner workings of their marriage. The emotional extremes, the tension of changing dynamics as one person increased their need for help while the other provided more care. The real pledge in sickness and in health wasn’t about not quitting when it got hard to watch someone you love suffer. It was about not letting one partner’s physical frailty in juxtaposition to their partner’s health define the relationship. It meant reframing your interactions, understanding that you cared for each other in different yet equally meaningful ways.

  Problem was, Nairne didn’t see it that way. And she’d so far stubbornly refused any physical help on the principle that I was not, in her words, her “fucking caregiver.”

  Ten minutes. I’d watched the clock. After doing her PT exercises, she’d been down on the floor trying to transfer up into her chair, and it wasn’t happening. It just wasn’t. Her arms were weak from pain, and her legs were extra uncooperative because the fall had exacerbated the inflammation around her injury site.

  I walked over, gripped her under the arms, and lifted her light frame up to her seat. She surprisingly didn’t say anything, just sighed and stared out the window like it had answers to life’s fundamental questions.

  I backtracked to the toaster and caught the bread as it popped up.

  “This is why I don’t want a relationship,” she muttered. “Marriage. Love.”

  Bread in hand, I froze while the butter sat on my knife. “What?”

  She glared at the window. “I hate being babied.”

  I went back to buttering. That sound was mesmerizing, metal scraping while little crumbs bounced in its wake. “No one’s babying you. You’re dealing with nonstop, agonizing pain. Help is always given at Hogwarts to those who ask.”

  Her hand slammed on her push rims. “Don’t throw Harry Potter at me right now.”

  I shrugged. Guy had to try. If the Boy Wizard didn’t lighten her up, nothing was going to.

  “I didna ask for help.”

  Her accent got thicker when she was emotional. She didn’t cry, or yell. But her idioms changed, and her tone got desperate, like she was miserable and just wanted out. That worried me. Which was why I came over any time I wasn’t working, training, or traveling. When I was doing those things, I had Bruno make sure she left her house every morning for classes and came back at night.

  “You did. You were just high on narcotics and hitting on my dad.”

  She didn’t laugh at that either.

  “I want to help and care for you, Nairne. That’s what we are. You let me be an overbearing, demanding asshole, and I take care of you. Just give yourself a little patience while your nerves quiet down—”

  “I’ve lost so much,” she whispered. “I was making progress walking.”

  I grumbled about handsy therapists and she didn’t even spare me a glance.

  “My research had to stop since I can’t do shite in the lab when I can’t think past pain. All because I had some stupid stress response to a stranger. What a fucking eejit.”

  “Hey.” Dominant voice. My knife clattered to the counter. I was done with this shit. She was hating on someone I loved—

  Loved. It was there, front and center in my thoughts. But I wasn’t dealing with that at the moment.

  “This stops now. Berating yourself. Beating yourself up.” I stalked around her counter through the dining room and crouched down, took her face in my hands. “Look at me. You’re going to be okay. It’s hard right now, and it’s all right to be pissed that it’s hard. But you have to stop blaming yourself.”

  Her eyes were glassy and unfocused. She wasn’t with me. “Nairne,” I said.

  They trained on me, gradually. “What?” Her voice sounded empty.

  “It’s okay to not be okay.”

  She snorted and straightened in her seat, pulling her face from my grasp. “Says the man who insists on making everything okay.”

  Was that what I was doing? I thought I was being there for her, but maybe she perceived pressure. Expectation that she felt she was failing to meet, by not being happy or feeling better.

  “I’m trying to be there for you. Just be your partner as you heal. You mean a lot to me. I’m not going to get scarce because you took a spill and then a turn down ornery lane. It sucks. You’re frustrated. It won’t always be like this. But I’ll have been there while it was. With you.”

  She sighed, rubbed her face. Then her hands dropped. That despondency was back.

  Fuck that. “Spread your legs.”

  A small spark shone in her eyes. She shook her head slowly. “I don’t want to.”

  “Wrong answer, cupcake. We have an agreement.” A completely unenforceable agreement that would kill my public image if it ever leaked, but an agreement, nonetheless. It was the game, the play. When she wanted to pull away or give up, I pushed and demanded. If at that point she told me to fuck off, I would. “Whenever, wherever.”

  She shimmied a little like she was thinking about it. Her fingers drummed on her legs.

  “I’m not asking, innamorata. Do it.”

  She did. Slid her hands to her thighs and pried them apart.

  “Good. Touch yourself.”

  Her hands dipped inside her leggings. I watched the outline of her fingers as they drifted south and slid along her seam. I could smell her arousal and my cock went from zero to ninety instantly. “Outside only. Your cunt is mine. You may touch your clit and entrance, nothing else.”

  She bit her lip and scowled. She loved fingering herself. Imagining it was my cock. She didn’t get that. Not yet.

  I lifted her shirt and cupped her breasts. Round. Soft. Fucking heaven in my hands. I bit her nipples hard, once each, scraped my teeth as I dragged away. She hissed as she bucked her hips.

  “This shit stops today, Nairne MacGregor. Overthinking it. Withdrawing. You’re min
e, you understand? Your pain doesn’t get to take you away from me.”

  Her breath hitched as I bit my way down her flat stomach. “Zed.”

  That despair. Her heartache. I wanted it out of her. An exorcism of her giving up. She surrendered to me, and not a damn thing else. Because Nairne was a fighter, a warrior, a fucking queen on the field of adversity. She didn’t sit back and let life’s battles be fought for her.

  “You don’t give up. One day at a time, you hear me?”

  She nodded.

  I tugged her leggings down. My god, what a cunt. Swollen. Pink. I kissed her open-mouthed and fucked her with my tongue, clawed her little ass with my palms. Ate her like the feast that she was.

  Her hand went to my hair, and I ripped it out, held it immobile against her side. She needed to be restrained. Reminded of her place amidst my strength. Safe. Protected. I took my sweet time, building her up—because I could—and denial was the expressway to Nairne’s masochistic pleasure.

  “I’m gonna—”

  “Hush.” I bit her clit and watched her fingers white knuckle the seat of her chair. “Don’t even try to tell me about what’s mine. I know your cunt. I know your body. I know your mind, Nairne. Now you’ll wait until I tell you that you can come.”

  She was panting, head thrown back, a waterfall of auburn hair spilling behind her. The column of her throat was long and pale. I grasped it, drew her head to look at me. She watched as I ate her out, tortured her, kept her on that edge for as long as I could.

  God, she was good. She held off like a champ. Breathed through her mouth, relaxed her muscles. While I tortured her, did everything I could that would make her scramble on the edge.

  Then I gave her a nod and she fell toward me, covering us in the crashing waves of her hair and heaving ribcage.

  She gasped, catching her breath while I kissed her neck and rubbed my hand along her back, careful of her scar. When her breathing steadied, I helped her slowly sit up, then dragged her pants up her legs.